by Liz Crowe
Austin had let himself drift while his friend had finished up, risen and beaten his bare chest with his fists like Tarzan. Dazed and wishing he could curl up on the couch and sleep for twelve hours, Austin had smiled and given a thumbs-up, knowing his friend required validation of his appreciation of the present he’d presented. The two girls had coiled up together on the floor, still writhing around, kissing and licking and sucking.
His blow-job buddy had emerged from the kitchen holding a beer, handed it to him, then dropped into the fray of long hair, red lips, tits and pussy. That had been the moment Austin had realized that Ross Hoffman had more game than he likely would ever approach, but he would always be grateful for the man’s friendship and willingness to share in the female bounty.
He’d rallied that night after a nap, a shower, and a great meal prepared by Ross himself. While the females had chattered away in German, Austin had observed them and his friend, and had marveled at the strange, wonderful turn his life had taken. One by one, he’d sampled the riches, and by the end of the night had gone down on two of them, fucked another by himself and sandwiched the hot, busty brunette with Ross in an epic double penetration move that had taught him a fair bit about the mechanics of doing such a thing with a guy as well-endowed as his friend.
The girls had been gone the next morning when they’d risen, glassy-eyed and sore in all the right places, which had been a-okay with Austin.
The next few years had been a blur of challenging classroom and on-site work and some of the most erotic moments of his life. They’d clashed a fair bit as Ross had tended to overreact to nearly every obstacle while Austin had been able to see them merely as one more thing to overcome, one more skill to master. Their rep with women had preceded them and by the end of the three-year program, Austin had honestly believed that he’d done or tried to do pretty much every position, every configuration, and every damn thing his kinky heart had desired. All thanks to his buddy, the super-alpha male, Ross Hoffman.
In the process, Austin had believed he’d found his calling and the best friend he’d ever had, but had known it was on borrowed time. He’d go back and run the brewery he planned to open in Michigan. Ross would stay in Germany or perhaps work on the west coast. His skill had been that of a musician, a true artisan, innate and sometimes over the top, while Austin had studied, learned, and filed it away as part of his master plan to open and run the most successful brewery in the Midwest.
As he sat, staring at Ross’ name, the memories came at Austin fast and proved too much after the turmoil of the day. He considered ignoring the note, unsure of where his head was anymore with regard to his friend. He’d been trying like hell to get him to come and be his brew master. But Ross’ seeming aloofness and unwillingness to consider coming to work with him pissed him off in ways he didn’t really understand. They’d never, ever had a nasty, jealous moment between them. To them, during those wild, erotically charged years, women had been interchangeable. No emotion had been attached to any of them.
Now that he had a totally new outlook on his life thanks to a chance meeting with the incredible Evelyn, getting Ross there seemed somehow less urgent. So when he absorbed the message, he exhaled with relief.
Sorry, Austin. I can’t. Although I am flattered that you keep asking. Stay in touch, Ross.
Realizing that required no response, he closed the laptop and stared at it a minute. By the time he hit the door of the brewery, the familiar smells and sights of his successful venture enveloping him, he managed to shove memories of Ross Hoffman and all they’d experienced together out of his head.
Which meant he could make room for the sexy loop that starred one Evelyn Benedict.
After some satisfying hours spent checking on fermenting batches, reading brewery floor reports for the day, studying the pick sheet and inventories, and mentally calculating the outgo for the sales he’d made that day, exhaustion settled over him like a thick, warm blanket. It made him groggy and snappish with the few staff members remaining. They ran a twenty-four-hour shop and the night shift had just clocked in as he made his way up to the office overlooking the brewery floor.
Without giving himself time to think, he fired up the computer, signed into his email and sent two messages, the first to Grant at TriCity.
Had a great day with Evelyn. Can you put me back on her schedule for Friday? We need to do some follow-up work and hit some places in Muskegon and Manistee, cheers, Austin.
He knew the guy would shuffle whatever needed shuffling to make this work and experienced a small twinge of guilt for manipulating the situation to suit himself, until he recalled how perfect she had felt, how soft and amazing her lips had been. And how very much he wanted to convince her they should take it one step further.
Willing himself back from fantasy land, he wrote the second email to Valerie. She was spending two weeks in Europe for work, ostensibly, but he knew most of her time was taken up with shopping.
Hey. When you get home we need to talk. Alone.
Austin had broken up with his fair share of girlfriends, but this one promised to be a real doozy, even though it had to happen. There was no way in hell he would be with anyone else while Evelyn Benedict existed in the universe. Realizing he was literally counting the hours until Friday, he turned off the computer and the lights and headed home.
Evelyn lay awake into the early hours, staring at the ceiling and willing her tired brain to sleep. After an hour or so, she gave up trying to find a comfortable position and hauled out her trusty vibrator to take some of her edge off.
Even that didn’t work.
She clenched her eyes shut as she sat on the side of her bed, trying to force Austin’s compelling green eyes, firm lips and strong hands out of her consciousness.
Pushy asshole had practically jumped her in that smelly back hallway. He really had some nerve.
She checked her phone for texts or email, hoping—like a lovesick teenager waiting for a prom invite—to see his name there. But of course nothing appeared other than the usual reminders to pay her credit card on time this month please and to renew her health club membership at the low-low rate of nine dollars and ninety-nine cents for one month. She tossed the stupid thing onto the dresser and glared at herself in the mirror.
You are not his type. He might try to grope you, but he’s probably all snuggled up right now with Debutante Barbie. Get a grip. You did the right thing cutting him off.
But her chest ached as if she’d run several miles and her breathing wouldn’t slow at the thought of him. No man had had this effect on her, ever. It was unsettling in the extreme. And Evelyn was determined to conquer it. She had no time to spend being moony over the one guy every woman in Michigan was after.
A glance at the clock confirmed the hour of four a.m. had come and gone. She pulled on her worn-down running shoes and stuck buds in her ears. Cranking the hard rock up to a level that would hopefully drown out everything, including the gravelly, sexy memory of his voice, she headed out into the cool dawn air.
By the time she hit the office, her brain had kept up its weird schizophrenic leapfrogging between her to-do list for the rest of the week and intense memories of Austin’s lips on hers. She was already sick of herself. She grabbed coffee and passed by Grant’s door, heard him laughing and suppressed a shiver of déjà vu. The ‘before Austin’ and ‘after Austin’ parts of her life were now permanently separated. And that damned place would never feel the same to her again.
Oh for Christ’s sake, Benedict! Stop being so melodramatic.
“Evelyn!”
She stopped at the sound of Grant’s voice and forced her legs to carry her back to it, halting at the doorway, unwilling to enter.
“Nice work yesterday.” Grant leaned back in his leather chair, grinning at her. She summoned a weak smile. “So good, as a matter of fact, it seems Mr. Fitzgerald is a fan and wants another day in your august presence. As soon as possible, like Friday.”
Evelyn sputtered and near
ly choked on the sip of coffee she’d taken in an attempt to be casual. Grant held out a tissue as she stumbled over to his desk to look at a message he’d pulled up on the computer monitor. There it sat, glowing and real, like the kernel of lust she’d nurtured in her core since yesterday.
She fell into the chair, hand over her eyes.
“Beat it, chick. There’s beer and wine to sell.” Grant’s voice broke through the haze that threatened to overtake her. She looked up at him. His shrewd, handsome face was pensive as he looked at her. “Be careful.” He waved a hand to dismiss her.
“Careful of what?” She stood, still clutching the tissue and coffee mug.
“Oh, you know. Predatory country-club boys looking to score. I’m forwarding you this, so you can answer yourself. But it’s fine with me if you want another selling day with him.”
She frowned at him, but her heart leapt into her chest yet again, making her breathless as she hustled down to her cubicle. Stopping herself from mentally flipping through the meager options in her business-wear closet, she clenched her hands together and watched the email drop into her inbox.
There it sat, his words as real as day. Typing her name, requesting more time with her, for ‘follow-ups’ and some other shit about going up the coast to sell. Nothing they had actually discussed, but, of course, their parting had been a bit strained.
She squared her shoulders, read it for the hundredth time, then started to respond and politely decline his request. But her fingers would not cooperate and she found herself typing out the words—Sure. See you then. Same time, same place. Evelyn—then hitting Send before her inner smart person won the battle raging inside her.
The thing about email, she reflected as she put her aching head on the desk, was that once you sent, it couldn’t get called back.
“Hey, what up?” Her friend Melody Rodriguez appeared at her cubicle. They’d been chatting over lunches lately and Evelyn had found herself liking the extraordinarily striking woman. Melody had an accounting degree from the local community college, worked in the logistics department at Tri City and lived with her widowed mother and three younger siblings three floors down from Evelyn’s apartment—they’d discovered to their amused delight. They’d spent a few late nights sampling beers and exchanging crappy relationship stories—or rather, Evelyn had shared her crappy stories and Melody had listened to them.
“My life is over,” Evelyn groaned into her arms.
“What happened?”
“I have to sell with Austin Fitzgerald again.”
“You’re so full of shit it’s leaking out your ears,” Melody said.
When Evelyn didn’t reply, her friend snorted and smacked her shoulder. “Girl, you need to get a grip. That man is fine.” She made a kissy noise. Evelyn glared at her, not quite ready to admit just how fine Austin was, based on her direct lip-to-lip experience with him.
Within a minute, she heard the little ding of an incoming message and knew before she raised her eyes to the screen who it would be from. The words seared into her brain.
Great! Looking forward to it. I promise to behave if you will. Austin.
Chapter Five
Evelyn smoothed her linen skirt once more, nervously creating wrinkles in the too-expensive material as she waited for Austin to show up. She’d made a quick credit card payment, running the damn thing back up again with a new suit, shoes, hair color session and, in a fit of bizarre optimism, a Brazilian bikini wax. All in the name of presenting a professional front, she justified with every swipe of the card.
By the time she’d arrived at the office Friday morning she had worked herself into a regular state, unable to eat or choke down coffee. The twin combination of anticipation and anger fought for control in her brain.
She ignored the rest of the salesmen in the break room, flipped off a few of them at their asinine commentary about fancy clothes and fancy boy toy for the day. Once she figured out Mr. Boy Toy himself was going to be fashionably late, she let anger win the arm-wrestling match in her head.
Melody wasn’t in her office when Evelyn checked and one of the admins told Evelyn she’d called in sick.
Pissed that she couldn’t vent to her friend, Evelyn sent Melody a quick text to check on her, then opened her laptop and starting banging out the weekly reports she’d normally be doing anyway were she not nearly two hundred dollars further in debt thanks to Austin-fucking-Fitzgerald.
Her ears buzzed and her gut churned every time she heard the front doorbell chime, indicating someone else had walked into their front office. She glanced at the phone when it buzzed with a text.
Sorry! Running late! B there in twenty.
She stared at the unfamiliar number, shrugged, entered him as a contact, and tried to tame the butterfly parade marching around her stomach. Visions of him, memorized from earlier in the week, had danced in and around her libido for hours at a time, making her nearly insane with lust.
He doesn’t want anything more from you than a quick lay. Don’t do it. Unless you think you can handle it.
She bit her lip, willing herself calm when the doorbell sounded and she knew before she even heard the deep rumble of his voice that he’d arrived.
She sat, frozen in place, white-knuckling her own fingers. He made his way back, greeting everyone as he came toward her small space. She stared up at the ceiling, then down, and met his gaze. He leaned on the opening to her cubicle, grinning, eyes twinkling. Clad this time in expensive-looking tan trousers and a blue button-down open at the neck, the man was as delectable as she remembered.
More so, if that were possible.
His essence filled her space, her very pores seeming to open and accept him. Odors of rich malt and piney hops filled her nose.
Evelyn sucked in a breath.
I am so totally screwed.
The words tumbled around in her head as she stood, knocking her coffee cup onto the keyboard of her laptop in the process. He jumped forward to grab it at the same time she did, his nose colliding with the top of her head. “Ow,” he muttered as he threw tissues from the box on her desk down on the spreading brown stain.
“Here.” She handed him some for his nose. “Sorry. I’m a klutz.” Her hair draped her face, hopefully hiding the extreme flush that had spread over her skin as she sopped up the mess and wiped the computer down, praying she hadn’t ruined it.
The sight of him holding a tissue to his perfect nose, one eyebrow raised at her nervous activity, made her giggle. His smile grew, which made her snort with laughter.
“Glad I can entertain you,” he mumbled behind the tissue. “I aim to serve.” He stood and made his way toward the bathroom as tears streamed down her face and her gut ached from laughing so hard. By the time he’d returned, a smile still playing around the corners of his full lips, she’d calmed to hiccups. She grabbed her keys and phone and led the way down the back hall toward the parking lot.
Austin’s ears felt hot and his pulsed raced as he followed her, mesmerized by the sway of her hips and the sound of her earlier laughter. All the anticipated stress he had ahead of him as he broke off the relationship with Valerie and dealt with parental fallout faded as he let the fuzziness of time with Evelyn wash over him. They tucked samples into the trunk of her crappy car and he slid into the passenger seat. She nodded toward an obnoxious black sports car two slots down from hers. “That must be yours.”
He shrugged, suddenly at a loss for words. Even the smell of her set his nerves dancing. The clean linen and slightly floral notes of her perfume curled around his brain and settled in for the long haul.
He gripped his knees.
Perhaps this was a bad idea, after all.
The distinct sensation of his control slipping away from him, giving way to base urges and a near-painful need to have her in his arms unnerved him so much his legs shook and a headache took hold in his temples.
“Very alpha male. You overcompensating for something?” Her expression was one of pure evil. He had to phy
sically restrain himself by hanging on to the door handle not to yank her close and kiss that look off her face.
“I don’t have a single thing to overcompensate for with a car.” He feigned nonchalance, not believing for a minute she bought it, wincing at the creaky, nervous sound of his voice.
As she started in on their selling itinerary for the day, he heard nothing but the buzzing in his ears that had ramped up to nearly deafening decibels. But he settled himself in, focused on his goal, and turned to her as she pulled into the early morning traffic heading north toward the resort areas along Lake Michigan. “Thanks,” he said simply.
She glanced over her shoulder and merged onto the busy highway. It took her nearly five minutes to acknowledge him. He spent the time well, studying the angles of her face, her high cheekbones, bright blue eyes and God help him—that glorious fall of honey-blonde hair that fairly begged for his hands.
When she spoke, it startled him, so absorbed was he in the future fantasy. Of her, him, together, with kids of all things, running the brewery, happy forever.
Jesus, Fitzgerald, you’ve gone full female on yourself.
“You’re welcome.” She glanced over and smiled. His heard pounded so hard he was surprised she didn’t see it move his shirt. “For…”
“Huh? Oh, well, you know, for taking me out again.” He watched as his hand moved, breached the distance between them, hovered, then retreated when she frowned at him. “I know, I promised to behave. And I will. So—” He shifted, attempting to find a comfortable position. Even the constant state of arousal he experienced around her felt familiar. “Repeat the agenda for me, would you? I was, ah, distracted earlier.”
She cleared her throat and did so, as he attempted to concentrate on her words and not just the cadence of her voice. One way or another, he had to get his hands on her again, today, soon, now, even. He experienced a small thrill of worry. Maybe that was all he wanted from her. But one thing he knew for certain—he’d never felt this way about Valerie. Their various sexual exploits consisted of her trying to prove how good she was at blow jobs or how quickly she could orgasm. Boring. Predictable. And unsatisfying. He licked his lips and snuck another glance at Evelyn just as she was doing the same to him. He grinned and she glanced away first, her face flushing a delightful shade of red.